Christmas Lights
by kate221b
Summary: It's tough being homeless, especially at Christmas. When Sherlock finds himself cold and alone on the streets of London, he can see no way back. What he needs now is one more miracle, and he might just be about to find it - even if it's not the one that he thinks that he wants.
1. Chapter 1

This story is for all of you lovely people who have read and commented on my stories this year, while I've been on a monumental hiatus. And it is especially for sevenpercent, GhyllWyne, SailonSilvergirl and ThessalyMc.

This follows on from The Box but can also be read in isolation. All that you need to know is that in my version of Sherlock's childhood he spent part of the previous year in a psychiatric hospital with psychotic depression, but don't let that put you off. The story is also slightly AU in that in my version of events both of Sherlock's parents are dead, leaving Mycroft as his guardian. Other than that it very much follows the BBC cannon up to the to end of series 2.

* * *

It was cold on the streets today. Sherlock shivered and pulled his sleeping bag closer up round his shoulders, tightening his scarf to cover the gap between it and his hat. He checked his watch, keeping his arm as far into the bag as he could while squinting to see the hands in the half-darkness of the bag's interior. Three o'clock - several hours before he dared to make the move to the office vestibule with its blessed hot air vents which would provide him with at least some warmth overnight. The trick, he knew, was to time it so that the last of the office workers had left and wouldn't call the police to have him moved on, but not leave it so late that somebody else would poach his spot.

His feet felt like blocks of ice even within the relative warmth of the sleeping bag. He ought to find somewhere warm to sit for a few hours; the local libraries tolerated him for a couple of hours or so before the staff started loudly clearing up books near him, and they were warm, and the chance to sit and read made him feel vaguely civilized and at least half human. But somehow even the short walk to the library seemed like too much of an effort today. He coughed, a deep rattling sound that went on and on, and made his already sore chest ache. When the spasm was over, he rested his head back against the cold concrete of the alcove he was sitting in to get his breath back, before pulling away as he felt the cold start to leach through the layers of sleeping bag and clothes to the skin of his back. At least his bottom half was insulated by the layer of cardboard boxes he was sitting on, a neat trick that he had learnt by observation of the others in this strange community that he was trying hard not to become a part of. He had picked up a lot during his two weeks on the street, more than he would ever have thought possible and nothing he could ever have got from a book - where to sit during the day to stay as warm as you could; where to go later in the evening to avoid having your day's taking nicked; where to sleep; where to wash; where to go for a free cup of coffee and a sandwich where you wouldn't be subjected to a lecture or reported to social services for being underage. Strange skills, odd knowledge, but as Mycroft said, no knowledge acquired was ever useless, you just had to know how to file it away for later use.

Sherlock had changed physically in the last two weeks too. He had acquired a dull dusting of stubble on his chin and cheeks, partly by choice and partly by lack of facilities and impetus to shave. While it would never be a full beard, the resulting stubble made him look both older and less of a target. It also had the added benefit of making him look scruffy and slightly threatening. People had started crossing the street to avoid him, although that might have been the smell - it was hard to stay clean on the streets and when you only had one change of clothes and those had come from charity shops. On the rare occasion that he was able to look in a mirror, he convinced himself that he looked far older than his seventeen years, hopefully old enough to stop the police questioning him about his age. He had become proficient in picking his pitches now, too, staying off the main thoroughfare as much as he could, where he was less visible to passing police patrols, but not picking a spot so isolated that he became an easy target for those who offered you a choice between a kicking or handing over your belongings. Sherlock had always been good at fighting - another skill that wasn't on the public school syllabus, but one you picked up quickly all the same. It turned out that those living on the street fought even dirtier than the boys at school, something he hadn't thought was possible. After having most of his belongings stolen in the first few days, he had learnt to keep his newly acquired rucksack stuffed into the bottom of his sleeping bag, away from view.

He had learnt the hard way that his public school accent made him stick out like a sore thumb and had instead affected an accent that was an odd mix of Essex and Cockney. It seemed to do the trick. He kept to himself, talking to other people only when strictly necessary, avoiding making eye contact with anyone, keeping his voice low and mumbled. Not that many people bothered him - just the odd drunk, wanting a bit of conversation, or the do-gooders who dropped coins on his sleeping bag and who only required a mumbled 'thanks' before they moved on, as if their consciences could be temporarily cleansed by this small act of charity. Sherlock hated being a charity case, hated the pity in their eyes, as if it could never happen to them, as if he hadnt been just like them a few weeks ago - well dressed, well educated, money in his pocket, the world at his feet (well, according to Mycroft anyway). And all it had taken was one small slip, one monumental fuck-up and here he was. Alone. Homeless. Hungry. Freezing. And with no way back.

'Hello, Will,' came a voice. And it took him a moment to remember that was the name that he'd given himself in his early days on the street. Foolish really, of all the names he could have chosen it was a little too close to the truth. He looked up to see a cup being held out in his direction. Steam was coming off the top of it. Hot, warming, he knew it would contain black coffee with two sugars, just the way he liked it. But taking it would require him to remove his hands from the sleeping bag, and so he hesitated for just a moment.

'It's just coffee, ' the voice said cheerfully. 'If you don't want it, then I'll drink it myself.'

Sherlock freed his hands and took the cup, took a sip: it was so hot it scalded his tongue, but he gulped down several mouthfuls all the same, grateful for the warmth spreading through his body. He definitely needed to get out ofthe cold . The sun had been hitting his spot earlier that day, but even that had disappeared now, and it would get colder soon once dusk fell.

He looked up to see that the bearer of the coffee was still standing there, watching him. Early to mid twenties, sandy brown hair, brown eyes, pleasant open face that Sherlock might have found attractive in other circumstances, grey designer beanie, well cut navy blue duffle coat. Family money, Sherlock guessed. He certainly didn't earn enough money for those clothes doing his day job as a teaching assistant. Tom, his name was Tom, Sherlock remembered, his brain feeling as numb as his feet, wondering why he could remember the job but not the name. He coughed again and nearly spilt his coffee.

'You okay?'

'I'm fine,' Sherlock mumbled, annoyed at himself for having shown weakness. 'What are you doing here in daylight? I thought you lot only came out at night.'

You lot. The street outreach workers, or whatever they called themselves. Tom volunteered for them in the evenings, , doing his bit for charity after school and now in the holidays - taking hot drinks and food round to the homeless at night, trying to persuade them to come into the shelters. But Sherlock didn't dare risk it. He had tried one a few days after he had come to London, but a couple of non-uniformed police officers sniffing round had forced him to make a bolt for the back door before he'd had the chance to do more than have a hot meal, let alone get any much needed sleep. It made sense that Mycroft would be looking to him, and shelters were the obvious place to begin the search. He should have gone to another city, but he knew London, knew its hidden places, knew how to stay lost there, and besides the thought of going somewhere new terrified him. Living rough was bad enough here, let alone in a new city.

'I'm Christmas shopping,' Tom said, making Sherlock jump. He had almost forgotten he was there. He felt tired, he needed to sleep. He had been disturbed several times last night by Christmas party revelers singing and laughing as they walked down the quiet side-street where he had settled for the night. One of the men had tried to take a piss on his sleeping bag, and Sherlock had only just scrabbled away in time to stop it getting soaked, and then faced the dilemma of trying to find another sleeping spot at 4am or trying to mop up the resulting puddle with cardboard and put up with the public urinal smell. He had opted for the latter, and although he had changed pitches since, he couldn't get the smell out of his nostrils and he had begun to suspect that it had seeped into his bag after all.

'Saw you sitting there,' Tom continued. 'You looked cold, thought you could do with a hot drink. Listen why don't you come up to the shelter when it opens later? Its going to be below freezing tonight, far too cold to stay out here.'

'I've got somewhere to go,' Sherlock mumbled.

'Like where, the Hilton?' Tom asked, his eyes amused. 'Come on, Will, be sensible. You need to warm up - we can get you a shower, some clean clothes, a hot meal and a bed for the night. I'll even wash that sleeping bag for you, how's that for an offer?'

Sherlock hesitated, just for a moment. He shouldn't show weakness, he knew it, but his appearance had changed so much in the last couple of weeks, wasn't it worth the risk? Besides, Mycroft would have already moved his enquiries away from the London shelters surely, and he knew that the one Tom worked out of was one of the smaller ones, tucked out of the way, unlikely to even be on Mycroft's radar.

'I'm fine,' he mumbled again, but he sounded unconvincing even to himself.

'Tell you what,' Tom said, 'How about I come and find you when I've finished shopping? I'm heading straight over to the shelter after that, you could come with me. Here -'

He dug into his pocket and handed Sherlock a fiver.

'Why don't you go into the cafe round the corner and get yourself something hot to eat? You look as if you need warming up. Better than sitting here in the cold while you're waiting.'

'I thought it was against the rules to give us money.'

'I'm not a fan of pointless rules - nor, I suspect are you. Think of it more as a loan to a friend - you can pay me back when you're back on your feet.'

'I don't have friends,' Sherlock snapped, but he found himself reaching out and taking the money anyway.

'Then maybe it's time you started,' Tom said as he pushed his hands back into his pockets. 'If you're not here when I come back,I'll look for you in the cafe.'

As Tom walked away, Sherlock found himself fighting his way out of the sleeping bag and standing up, extricating his rucksack from the bottom of the bag and starting to stuff the sleeping bag into it, smell and all. He wasn't about to turn down a free hot meal, no matter how he felt about charity. Besides, he was out of benzos, and without them the endless chatter in his head was becoming his intolerable. He would go and see what he could score, and then go to the cafe and warm-up. He didn't have to go with Tom later - of course he didn't. Taking the man's money didn't mean that he was in any way obligated to him. He didn't want charity, but a loan was a different matter. It implied that he knew that Sherlock was more than the dirty street rat that he appeared to be-that he saw past the grime and the street dirt, that Tom thought that he was worth saving, something Sherlock had not believed of himself since he had walked out of the college at Cambridge after thoroughly screwing up his future.

Sherlock wasn't sure that he wanted to be saved, but he swung the rucksack on his back and headed for the cafe all the same.

* * *

This story was partly inspired by the massive rise in rough sleepers that I've seen recently - and I'm a long way from London. Fortunately, the major cities are full of shelters, and outreach workers like Tom. If you want to help, then Shelter is a fantastic charity, working with the homeless in all kinds of ways, or buy them a cup of coffee or a sandwich. Few people choose to end up on the streets and its a tough world out there.


	2. Chapter 2

Four hours later, Sherlock found himself sitting at one of the trestle tables at the shelter, shovelling hot food into his mouth as if he was starving. Which, now he thought about it, he probably was.

Facts were flooding back to him now that he was slowly defrosting - arctic explorers needed eight thousand calories a day to maintain their weight. Staying warm took metabolic reserve that he had never had. A quick glance in the fogged-up mirror in the men's wash room after his shower had revealed every one of his ribs. He hadn't been exactly well covered before, but now he looked positively scrawny.

Tom had been as good as his word: he had found Sherlock in the cafe, huddled next to the radiator in a warm corner, cradling a cup of tea, and had walked with him to the shelter a few streets away, chatting cheerfully all the way. Sherlock had been glad for the constant stream of conversation. He was so tired that even the short distance proved a struggle, each step punctuated by spasms of coughing that he tried to hide in his scarf. Tom had the courtesy to pretend not to notice.

The shelter itself was little more than a glorified church hall, tucked round the back of a graveyard - appropriate, Sherlock thought, to put those that society treated as invisible next to those already dead. Sherlock had almost balked when he realised it was a Salvation Army building, but Tom had calmed him with a wry grin. 'Don't worry, there isn't any obligatory bible study or anything. In fact there's no religion at all if you want to avoid it. There are a few churchy types floating around, but they're easy to avoid. I'm an atheist myself, but shhh, don't tell anybody or they might boot me out.'

Sherlock glanced at him, aware of what Tom was doing - making him a co-conspirator, turning it into them against us. It was an old psychologists trick that Sherlock was well aware of, and Tom slipped into it as easily as if he'd been trained to do so. Sherlock tried to muster up the energy to be suspicious but found himself failing. If he hadn't managed to score some diazepam, the muttering voices in his head might have added to his paranoia, but with the drugs numbing his system, he found that he just didn't care. Just for once, he was going to assume that this was exactly what it appeared to be - one well-meaning individual who wanted to expunge the guilt for some past transgression by doing a good deed. He didn't believe for a moment that Tom was just a run of the mill do-gooder; there was a sharper edge to him, one that Sherlock would have felt the itch to unravel if he hadn't been so damned tired.

It was cold now that the sun had gone down. Sherlock could see his breath in front of his face where it leached out above his scarf, coming out in staccato mists with each storm of coughing. When Tom reached out to open the door, they were hit by a blast of warm air and light, and the unmistakable sound of piped Christmas carols.

'Ah yes, I should have warned you about that,' Tom said with a grin. 'They do like a bit of festive spirit.'

Sherlock realised with a jolt that he had no idea what the date was - it seemed to have been nearly Christmas for months, the shops full of twinkling white lights, Christmas decorations, and fairytale-like scenes of happy children wrapped in hats and impractical wooly mittens at inflated prices, having snowball fights or building snowmen. But the fact that the run up to Christmas would, eventually, lead to Christmas itself had nearly escaped him.

At Christmas everything would be shut - the library, the museums, the cafes. All of the places that he went to for a few hours of warmth and the illusion of being a functioning member of a civilised society. At Christmas the world would come to a halt, as people spent time with their families and friends and convinced themselves that this strange mid-winter bubble of happiness and good will to all men was real. At Christmas, Sherlock would be cold and alone, and stuck in his sleeping bag on his cardboard box, with the hard lump of his rucksack at his feet, and there would be no distraction from the incessant thoughts causing a virtual neural snowstorm inside his head.

'What's the date?' he blurted out, breaking his own rule of minimal spontaneous speech, and realising as he did so that his accent had slipped back to his usual cut glass tone. Tom, fortunately, didn't seem to have noticed.

'December 22nd,' he replied. 'Christmas in three days.'

Christmas had never Sherlock's favourite time on year. All of that enforced socialising, all of those parties with elderly relatives and associates of his parents trying to engage him in polite conversation while he was dressed up in a suit with a tie that felt as if it was going to strangle him. He had decided from an early age that once he was an adult he was never going to wear a tie again. That had been one of the many bonuses of dropping out of school and being home tutored after Elmhurst. No tie, no uniform, no need to conform to social niceties.

'You could come here you know - for Christmas. We throw quite a party,' Tom said, not realising that he was only escalating Sherlock's anxiety levels.

Sherlock simply shrugged, pushing down the rising panic at the thought of all of that enforced socialising as he walked into the hall.

Christmas music aside it was quieter than he had imagined. There were a few volunteers chatting at the far end of the hall as they folded blankets into neat piles. More were visible through the service hatch that led to the small kitchen.

'We're not officially open yet,' Tom told him, 'I thought you might like a chance to clean up in private, before the others arrive and start banging on the door to the bathroom. Come on - this way.'

The washing facilities were basic, but clean. A row of urinals against the far wall, a couple of stalls, and two showers, side by side. The showers had doors on them that could be locked, and that was a lot more than could be said for the wash basin in the public toilets by the fruit market that Sherlock had been using to wash in for the last week or so. He had learnt to pick his times - early in the morning, when the first traders were just starting to set up, or later in the evening, when the traders had gone home. There was a brief window between the market traders leaving and the first of the local stockbrokers nipping in for a desperation piss on the way back to the tube station after one pint. The city types were the worst - the market traders tolerated Sherlock, ignoring him as he scuttled into a stall mid-wash, clutching his clothes, not wanting to be seen semi-naked. The allegedly more civilised members of society with their smart suits and overly shined shoes were often more - interactive: swearing at Sherlock, occasionally kicking out at him if he didn't get out of their vicinity quickly enough. They made him feel as if he was the scum of the earth- an irritatant, like dog shit on the bottom of their shoes, or a coffee stain on their perfectly ironed, perfectly tailored white shirts. He hated them with a passion that he was surprised to discover that he still had the energy to muster.

Inside the shower cubicle, Sherlock had stripped slowly, throwing his dirty clothes over the top of his door, not caring if they got wet. Tom had promised him the use of a washing machine later, and had already taken his spare set of clothes and his sleeping bag to wash while he showered. Sherlock had felt a twinge of panic as he handed the bag - without it he was committing himself to staying here. If he left, he would freeze outside tonight without its insulating warmth.

'Hey, relax,' Tom had told him. 'I'll get it back to you in a couple of hours.'

And there it was again - the calm manner, the anticipation of his thoughts. It reminded him of something from his past, and yet he couldn't quite work out what.

The shower was blessedly warm and Sherlock fought the effort to groan in appreciation. He had always enjoyed being clean, the feeling of fresh clothes against his skin, and the inability to wash properly had been one of the things he had found hardest since he had allowed himself to fall through the cracks. He had dared the showers at Waterloo station once, just once, picking a busy time, keeping his hood up, trusting that he wouldn't be picked up by the CCTV camera, but the bathroom attendant had unnerved him, watching him a little too closely, looking a little too much like a security man for his liking, the radio on his belt standing out like a beacon, and Sherlock had found himself walking away unwashed.

Looking down at the puddle of water accumulating by his feet, he realised that the dirt in it was all his. The realisation made him shudder. He had to find a place to wash himself and his clothes more regularly or he was never going to get through the next few weeks.

He reached out for the small container of shower gel that Tom had provided him with and soaped himself thoroughly, then repeated the process until the water ran clear before attacking his hair. Hair that hadn't been washed for several weeks proved to be surprisingly hard to get clean. It took three attempts before Sherlock could run his hands through it without grimacing. At least it was short at the moment, freshly cut for his interviews, unlike the unruly mop of curls that he usually favoured, much to Mycroft's disapproval. The haircut had been his brother's idea, as had been the tailored suit which he had protested so hard against.

'It's an interview for a place at Cambridge, Sherlock,' Mycroft has said, in a tone that Sherlock knew was his attempt at being patient, but instead came out as a mixture between disapproval and exasperation. 'You can't exactly go along in jeans and a t-shirt.'

'Why not? I thought they wanted me for my mind, not for my dress sense.'

'Because it's expected. You need to make a good impression.'

'Why do you care anyway?'

And that had been the trigger of a big argument. Yet another one in a long sequence of them. As usual it began with Sherlocks accusing Mycroft of trying to control his life, of trying to project his own ambitions onto Sherlock, and escalated into a not so polite request that Mycroft should just piss off and leave him alone. The altercation ended as it always did with the silence that Mycroft did so well; the quiet staring; the waiting, and then the habitual, crushing one-liner. Sherlock could have written the script.

'Forgive me, but I thought that you wanted to go to Cambridge. Unless you would prefer to stay here and fester for the next few years. If that is the case, then I won't stop you.'

Lacking a suitably cutting reply, Sherlock had walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and shut himself in his room where he turned Brahms violin concerto up to full volume and used his anger to give him the impetus to crack a tricky mathematical equation that he had been struggling with for weeks.

The next day he had got up early, showered, and then headed into the nearest town for a haircut. Feeling empowered, he had then caught the tube into London where he had taken great delight in buying the most expensive dark blue suit he could find at Mycroft's tailors on Savile Row, charging it to his brother's account.

The suit, it had turned out, had been absolutely hopeless for keeping him warm on the streets. He had quickly replaced it for jeans and a hoodie in a charity shop and dumped the suit in an industrial skip as far away from the place he was staying as he could manage. The suit would be recognisable, and he didn't want to leave Mycroft any clues.

Still, Sherlock felt a twinge of guilt when he thought about his brother, alone in their big house, walking past the big Christmas tree that they always had in the hall. Since their mother's death it had appeared almost miraculosuly overnight - put up and decorated by the house staff, like some benevolent elves. Would there be presents for him under it this year, even though Mycroft knew that he was unlikely to be there to open them? Without Sherlock there, who would leave presents for Mycroft other than those minions at work trying to curry favor, or those shady members of government for whom he had done favors over the year? Not that Sherlock's presents had ever been anything other than formulaic - a pair of cuff links, a bottle of whisky, a paperback picked from the best seller list, but they had been presents handpicked by him all the same.

Sherlock closed his eyes tightly, knowing that it was against something far darker than the shampoo stinging in his eyes. The waves of misery threatened to overwhelm him, and he quickly soaped himself a final time before stepping out into the anteroom in front of the shower to towel himself dry.

'I've got some clean clothes for you here,' came Tom's voice from just outside. 'I'll hand them over the top.'

How long had he be standing there, waiting for the noise of the shower to stop, Sherlock wondered? The thought made him feel more uncomfortable and exposed than ever. But here he was - naked, dripping, and with no clothes other than a thread-bare towel. He wasn't exactly in a position to protest - or to refuse the offer of clothes.

He reached his hand over the top of the cubicle and Tom passed him the garments one at a time - a plain t-shirt of the kind they paid kids in the third world ten pence an hour to make; a pair of light blue jeans, perfectly wearable but no longer fashionable, and a surprisingly decent plain black hoodie.

'I've got underwear for you too,' Tom said passing over a pair of new looking striped boxer shorts. 'I'll leave the socks outside with your boots, otherwise they'll get soaked on this floor.

Sherlock mumbled his thanks, and waited until he heard the door to the bathroom close before venturing out. The t-shirt and hoodie fit him well, but the jeans were far too big for him. He'd have to find a belt for them. Still, the clothes were clean, and dry, and smelt of washing powder and not of his own sweat and the grime accumulated through weeks on the street. It felt good to be clean.

He looked at himself in the mirror, wiping it with a sleeve to clear it of steam. He looked tired, dark shadow-ike bruises under his eyes. His hair was a tangled mess, and so he dug through the wash pack that Tom had provided him until he found a comb. It took him a good five minutes to wrestle out the knots, leaving his hair looking impossibly fluffy. He smoothed it into some semblance of order with water from the tap, wondering why he even cared. Maintaining his hair style hadn't exactly been at the top of his list of priorities for the last few weeks. He felt oddly exposed without the beanie hat that had been his constant headgear for the last few weeks, but was now in the washing machine with the rest of his clothing.

He cleaned his teeth quickly,realising that the noise level had started to rise outside, indicating that other rough sleepers were arriving. Sherlock wondered how quickly his sleeping bag would be dry, in case he needed to make a break for it. He stuffed the shaving kit back into his rucksack unused - he was keeping the stubble in the hope that it would make him less recognisable from the picture that Mycroft was no doubt still having circulated of him.

Finally, he dug into the bottom of his rucksack for the watch that he had inherited from his grandfather. He hadn't been able to bring himself to sell it, no matter how short of cash he had been, prefering to pick pockets for cash instead. He told himself that it was too easily identifiable to sell - a sure way to direct Mycroft's attention to his location. As if sentiment and keeping one piece of home with him had nothing to do with it.

Then shoving his feet back into his boots, Sherlock took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom to face the noise and people outside.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock hesitated at the edge of the room as the bathroom door swung shut behind him, unsure of which way to go. The volume in the room was uncomfortable after the silence of the streets; so many voices, clashing against each other with their multiple conversations; so many people. On the streets he was anonymous, but here he could feel too many eyes watching him, sizing him up. Their gazes were generally curious rather than threatening, but somehow that bothered him more. It would only take one person to recognise him and to shop him to the police and all of his plans, all that time spent surviving on his own, would be wasted.

'Will!' came a voice and he started, eyes flickering round the room to identify the nearest exit, wondering if he could get out before he was caught. Then he realised that he was being called by his street name, the one that he had given himself - that it wasn't over after all. The relief flooding through him was almost as welcoming as the warmth in the room. He wondered what it would be like to stop jumping at every shadow. He clenched and unclenched his fingers, focusing himself for a moment, before turning to look across the room to where Tom was waving him over to the tea table that he seemed to be manning.

'Do they fit okay?' he asked. It took Sherlock a moment to realise that he was asking about the clothes.

'They're fine,' he mumbled, knowing that he should thank him again, but feeling oddly reluctant to acknowledge the charity. 'I could do with a belt, though,' he added, realising that pride was one thing, having to employ one hand at all times to prevent your trousers from falling down by your ankles was another issue entirely.

'I'll see what I can find for you. Now have a cup of tea. We'll start serving food in an hour or so. Most people here are fairly friendly, or there's a quiet corner over there if that's what you'd prefer,' he nodded to the far side of the hall where several wipe-clean sofas were arranged around a battered coffee table covered with books and magazines in a pitiful approximation of a 1950s living room.

Sherlock nodded his thanks, took the mug of tea he was being offered, and headed over to the quiet area. At least it was empty, unlike the trestle tables in the middle of the room, which were rapidly filling up with people, more coming in every few minutes. There were a good thirty or forty of them by now, and Sherlock wondered uncomfortably if they were all planning on staying the night, and if so where on earth they were all going to sleep.

There were a couple of today's newspapers on the coffee table, presumably donated by one of the volunteers. Sherlock picked up The Metro and flicked through it, wondering what he would do if he saw his own face staring out at him from the pages. Would he slip out of the back door, taking the paper with him? Would he shove the paper into his rucksacks feigning ignorance, as if the boy in the picture had nothing to do with him? He realised that he didn't know, and turned each page more slowly than the last, the relief when his picture failed to appear alternating with rising panic with each new page he turned, then relief again, in a seemingly never-ending cycle.

When he reached the final page he felt an odd sense of deflation. What had he expected? That Mycroft would resort to a full page advert to expedite his return? Advertising that he had misplaced his little brother was hardly Mycroft's style. And it wasn't as if he didn't have other resources to hand. His typical methods would be more direct, more targeted. Hidden behind the paper, Sherlock allowed his gaze to flicker round the room, wondering if any of the people there were plants, sent to try to seek him out. He could feel the effects of the diazepam fading, the paranoia beginning to return. He forced himself to take a few slow deep breaths before his pulse raced out of control and he spiraled into a full-blown panic attack.

The breathing techniques calmed his panic but had an unwanted side-effect as they triggered another spasm of coughing, which had been only temporarily appeased by the warm steam of the bathroom. His lungs felt as if they were on fire and his chest was rattling alarmingly. Sherlock threw the paper he was reading onto the chair next to him, planted his elbows on his thighs, and braced himself against them as he tried to control the coughing fit.

'Here,' came a voice, and a plastic tumbler of water was pushed into his hand. He drank it rapidly, spluttering a little with inadvertent coughs until the coldness numbed his throat enough to quell the episode and he took a few grateful gasps of much needed air.

'Sounds as if you could do with some antibiotics for that cough,' came a female voice. He looked up to see a woman in her late thirties. Casually dressed in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Sherlock wondered what her story was, but found himself too tired to care. He shrugged, wary of speaking for fear of the cough returning.

'There's a walk-in centre just across the road that's open late' the woman continues. 'We could get you seen after supper?'

He shook his head, eyes focusing on the plastic tumbler of water, on the beads of condensation running down the side, not wanting to meet the woman's gaze, not wanting to be seen by her. This was what he had been trying to avoid - being memorable, sticking out from the crowd, and now his body had betrayed him. A walk-in centre will mean having to divulge or make-up personal details - name, address, date of birth, GP. And the way he was feeling at the moment the changes of slipping up, of making a detectable error were high. Even if he managed to get away with it, his details would still be on a database, his face on CCTV. His entire game-plan of staying under the radar, remaining off grid, would be scuppered. If Mycroft was having details of people of his age booking into health-care settings sifted then it would only be a matter of time before he found him and all of his hard work would have been for he went to the walk-in centre. He might as well put a flashing neon arrow over his head. The effect would be the same.

'I'm fine,' he murmured, picking up the paper again in a clear message that he wanted to be left alone.

'Your choice, but if you change your mind I'd be happy to take you over later. My name's Helena, by the way.'

The woman was still standing there, why was she standing there? He looked up and realised that she was waiting for him to tell her his name. 'Will,' he said reluctantly, and then almost subconsciously stuck out his hand in an odd parody of normal manners. On the streets people tried hard not to touch each other; even in shops, the cashier would put your change down on the desk rather than risk touching your dirt-ingrained fingers, as if they were afraid of catching something - beyond the obvious. They were afraid of catching poverty, as if failure was as contagious as the common cold. They were afraid of caching the very thing that had made Sherlock fall between the cracks. What they didn't realise was that sometimes you had to choose to allow yourself to fall.

Helena's hand-shake was firm and confident, and Sherlock wondered how long it had been since he had last touched another human being. A week? Longer? The last person whose had he had shaken had been the Cambridge Chemistry Professor who had taken him for that fateful interview.

'Pleased to meet you, Will,' she said. 'If you change your mind about the doctor later, then come and find me and I'll take you across.'

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, almost overcome by the simple humanity of it. Being treated like a person and not an object was somehow _strange_. It almost made him believe that there could be another way of doing this, a less painful way. But, he had a plan and he was going to stick to it: keep his head down, stay anonymous, minimise the risk of being recognised, prevent Mycroft from finding him. It was December twenty-third; less than two weeks to go before his eighteenth birthday. After that,he could do whatever he wanted. Mycroft wouldn't be able to touch him. And yet somehow, that didn't give him the warm, comfortable feeling that it always had in the past.

What if it wasn't going to be that simple? This was _Mycroft_ after all. When had he ever given up at anything? What if he had a way of keeping Sherlock within his control even after he reached his legal majority? What if -'

'You new here?'

He jumped at the voice, jolting him out of his contemplation. The voice was rough; Scottish he thought, probably Glaswegian. He looked up to see a man who could have been anything between fifty and seventy; life had obviously not been kind to him. His nose had been fractured more than once, the broken veins across its bridge and his ruddy complexion betraying years of hard-living. The man's hair was more salt than pepper and he could have done with a hair-cut, but he looked cleaner than most of those in the shelter that evening, with a just-scrubbed look which suggested that he had availed himself of the showers.

'Yup,' Sherlock replied quietly, focusing on his newspapers, scanning the same sentence over and over again, hoping that the man would take the hint and leave him alone.

'It's okay here,' the man said. 'Better than some of those other places. At least it's clean. You won't get no creepy crawlies here and they're less preachy than most.'

Sherlock grunted in a non-committal way, not wanting to make himself memorable by his rudeness, but not wanting to give any suggestion that he wanted to enter into a conversation ether.

'Quiet one, eh?' the man said. 'Fair enough. I'm Jock by the way.' Of course he was. Nothing like a good stereotype. Sherlock fought back the temptation to say something sarcastic.

He looked up and realised that the man was holding out his hand to shake. Christ, what was this? International hand-shaking day? He lifted his to meet it reluctantly. 'Will,' he said.

'Not been on the streets long, have you,' Jock said looking him up and down, his eyes lingering for too long on Sherlock's watch. His expensive inherited watch that didn't remotely fit the persona that he was trying to project. Damn, he would have to keep it better hidden from now on. He didn't want it to make him a target; worse still, he didn't want it to make him stick out fro the crowd.

'A few months,' Sherlock said, putting the paper down.

Jock made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort. 'Few weeks, more like,' he said and Sherlock opened his mouth to protest but was prevented from doing so by another violent spasm of coughing.

'Run away from home, have you?' Jock asked.

'Foster home,' Sherlock gasped between coughs, turning to the back-story that he had invented for himself.

And there was the snort again. 'With an accent like that? I don't think so,' Jock said, and Sherlock realised with a sickening jolt that in the effort to talk without coughing he had forgotten to adopt his Essex accent.

He scrambled to his feet, trying his hardest not to cough, and grabbed his bag from by his feet, wondering if he dared to try to get his sleeping bag back before he left. He looked frantically round the room for Tom to ask for it back, but he had disappeared from behind the tea table and was nowhere to be seen.

There was suddenly a hand on his shoulder, and he twisted to shake it off. Jock held up both his hands to show he meant no harm, 'Hey, I'm sorry,' he said, and Sherlock could smell the alcohol on his breath, 'I was just trying to be friendly. Where you come from is your business.'

'Everything okay here?' and there was Tom, looking concerned. Where had he sprung from so quickly? 'You're not leaving already are you, Will? Food's almost ready.'

Sherlock hesitated, just for a moment, and Jock mumbled another apology and shuffled away.

'He's okay, Jock,' Tom told him. 'He just likes to try to help the newbies.'

'Who said that I was a newbie?' Sherlock snapped.

'Come on, Will,' Tom said. 'Calm down. You're safe here.' He reached out to put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder in reassurance, but Sherlock flinched away from him, reflexively. Why was everyone so keen on touching him all of a sudden? Why couldn't they just leave him alone? He was aware that his breath was coming in quick, fast gasps as he tried to work out which way to run. He knew that Tom was right - that he needed to calm down, but he could no longer remember how to do that. The room was beginning to swim round the edges and he knew that if he didn't hang onto something, anything, then he was going to pass out.

He side-stepped Tom and headed for one of the trestle tables, stumbling into a chair and sitting down in it more quickly than he had intended, resting his head on the table, his arms coming up to cradle it, creating his own personal space, just as he had been taught. Through the buzzing in his ears, he could hear a familiar voice among all of the other voices clamouring for his attention - Mycroft's telling him that he was coming to find him; his father's telling him that he was evil and needed punishing; Tom's talking to him in a constant stream of what was probably reassurance. But the voice that he finally managed to latch onto was female, someone that he trusted, someone who could pull him through the haze and the panic. It was telling him to concentrate on the coldness of the table, on its smoothness against his forehead; it was telling him to concentrate on his feet, grounded on the floor; to take a deep breath in, hold it for three, then breathe all the way out and repeat. She prompted him to concentrate on the breaths, on the air filling his lungs, on the sound it made as he breathed out.

Gradually the room swam back into focus and the buzzing in his ears subsided. Eventually, Sherlock raised his head to see that Tom had taken a seat next to him, looking concerned.

'Look, I'm sorry,' he said. 'I should have looked out for you better. It's not easy here the first time, I know. Stay, please. Have some food at least. You'll feel better with a hot meal inside you.'

Sherlock nodded slightly, not wanting to acknowledge that he didn't think he would have made it across the room even if he had tried to leave.

The food when it arrived was hot and filling. Mycroft would have sniffed at the basic cooking, but Sherlock didn't care. Food had only ever been fuel to him anyway. He didn't understand all of the people who went into raptures about Michelin-starred cooking. Food was food, and this food warmed him up in a way that neither the warmth of the room or the hot shower had been able to.

When Tom offered him a second helping, he found himself agreeing without thinking. When he had finished eating, exhaustion hit him like a solid wall. Walking across the room to the sleeping quarters at the far end of the hall was effort enough; he couldn't have left if he'd wanted to. He flung himself onto the camp bed that Tom pointed out to him, pulled his sleeping bag over himself, too tired even to get into it, and fell asleep within seconds, one arm curled protectively around his rucksack.


	4. Chapter 4

The room was empty when Sherlock woke, although the state of disarray and the overwhelming aroma of male locker-room told him that he must have had multiple room-mates overnight. Light was streaming through the high windows that ran down one side of the room. Sherlock sat up, blinking in its glare. The light had an odd quality, and he found himself climbing onto a camp bed by the window to confirm his suspicions - the world had turned white overnight, a good inch of snow lying on the ground and the few trees in view were sparkling with a thick frost. It was a day to be curled up in a chair in the library with a roaring fire and a good book. It certainly wasn't a day to be heading out for the streets. A bout of coughing caught him unaware, and he steadied himself with one hand on the wall until it had passed.

He stepped down carefully from the camp bed on legs that felt unexpectedly unsteady, not trusting himself to jump with both feet as he would have thoughtlessly a few weeks ago. His body was betraying him and he knew it. He picked up his sleeping bag and stuffed it back into his rucksack, before heading back out into the main room.

It was far quieter than he had been expecting. There were a few stragglers still nursing cups of tea around the trestle tables, while volunteers were clearing away the last of the breakfast plates and starting to stack up the chairs and fold away the vacated tables.

Sherlock hesitated at the edge of the room, wondering whether he had time to use the bathroom or if he should hedge his bets and at least get a cup of coffee before he was chucked out into the cold. His aching bladder was not to be ignored, however, so he headed for the bathroom which was thankfully empty. After a long and fulfilling piss, he decided that if breakfast was over he might as well take advantage of the shower facilities while he had the chance. As he stood under the seemingly endless torrent of hot water, he vowed that he would never take being warm and clean for granted again.

The door to the bathroom door banged open, making him start. 'Anyone in here?' a voice asked.

'I'll just be a minute,' Sherlock shouted back, realising that his chance of a hot drink had probably long gone.

'That you, Will?' came the voice that he recognised as Tom's.

'Yes.'

'Take your time, then. I've saved you some breakfast.'

Suspicion prickled at the back of Sherlock's neck. Why was he getting special treatment? And why was Tom here yet again?

Disliking the feeling of being watched, Sherlock shut off the shower, dried himself quickly on the towel he had grabbed from a stack by the door, and dressed himself after brief consideration in the clothes that he had slept in; the ones that Tom had given him the night before. He didn't think that he would be asked to return them, but he wasn't taking any chances, and he would need all the layers that he could get in this weather. His cough was getting worse, he knew it, and getting ill wasn't part of his plan. Staying warm was his best chance of staying well.

Tom was waiting for him when he came out of the shower, and sat Sherlock down at a trestle table, pushing a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, baked beans and a stack of toast in front of him. Suspicion flared in Sherlock again. It seemed a very extravagant breakfast for a shelter.

'Tea or coffee?' Tom asked.

'Why are you doing this?' Sherlock asked bluntly.

'Why am I doing what.'

'Why are you helping me?'

Tom sighed and sat down on the chair next to Sherlock.'Maybe because I think that you're worth helping?' he replied.

'Well you're wrong,' Sherlock told him, staring down at the plate of food. A large part of him wanted to grab his bag and walk out to prove that he didn't need charity, but his stomach felt hollow with hunger, despite all the food he had filled it with the night before. Mycroft always decried baked beans as the work of the devil, but Sherlock wasn't about to turn them down right now -nor was he going to head out into the snow any sooner than he had to. Pride was all well and good but it didn't excuse stupidity. He picked up the knife and fork and dug in, ignoring Tom's silent presence beside him.

When a cup of coffee appeared in front of him he drank it grateful. Black with two sugars. Of course.

'I want to help you,' Tom was saying as he sipped at his own mug of tea.

Sherlock's eyes darted nervously towards the door, wondering if this was a stalling tactic, if Mycroft was pulling up his car outside even now, flanked no doubt by a couple of burly policemen to stop him making a run for it.

'I get that you're scared, Will,' Tom said, 'but you can trust me - really.'

Sherlock pushed his plate away, hands unconsciously curling into fists.

'What makes you think that I need help?' he asked, staring at the table-top, fighting to keep his voice calm.

'Because for one thing, I don't believe that you're eighteen,' Tom said. 'And even if you are, you're not nearly as street-wise as you think that you are. You must have family somewhere. We have case workers over at the Shelter office who can help you get back in touch with them. Why not give it a try?'

'There's nobody,' Sherlock mumbled.

'Parents?' Tom asked.

'They're both dead,' Sherlock said, realising that Tom had noticed his clenched hands. He reached for his cup of coffee to give them something to do. 'Car crash, two years ago.' It was half-true anyway. He stifled a cough.

'Siblings?'

'No. Just me.'

'Grand-parents? Aunts and uncles? Godparents? Who were you living with up until now.'

'Foster parents,' Sherlock told him, allowing the crack in his voice to show. 'It didn't work out.'

'I'm sorry,' Tom murmured and he sounded as if he meant it. But he didn't sound as if he believed it.

Last night Sherlock had been too tired and hungry to notice what he now found obvious. A full night's sleep and a rise in his blood sugar no longer allowed him the luxury of failing to observe.

Sherlock had crashed out at about half nine. If Tom had been working a full late shift it was likely he would have been at the shelter until at least midnight. There was no affordable housing within a forty minute commute of here, so at best he would have reached home at one in the morning. To be sure of being here when Sherlock woke he must have been here from at least seven, requiring him to leave home at six. He didn't look like a man who was surviving on only five hours sleep, or if he was then he was a man who was well used to working on sleep deprivation. He looked well rested, like a man who had had a full eight hours sleep in a comfortable bed. He was wearing fresh clothes and had recently shaved. Something definitely didn't add up. Tom must have left early - right after Sherlock had fallen asleep, in fact, to look this well rested. Which could mean only one thing. He was here to watch Sherlock.

Tom's watch, now that Sherlock could see it, where his shirt sleeve rode up as it rested on the table was a Breitling. He had a slight dent on the ring finger of his left hand where a wedding ring must usually rest. His clothes fit his constructed personna, but the scent of the expensive modelling wax that he was using in his hair was one that was only sold on the type of old fashioned gentleman barbers which Mycroft and his cronies frequented.

Tom wasn't what he seemed to be. Sherlock knew it, but Tom didn't know that Sherlock knew it. He still had the element of surprise on his side. 'Run,' whispered the voice in his head, but he knew that if he did that then he was lost.

'What would you suggest?' he asked quietly, trying to sound interested.

'There's a hostel not far from here, ' Tom said. 'They only accept residents under twenty-five, so it would be right up your street. Come with me there, meet some people and see what you think. No pressure.'

So that was his game - get Sherlock to a quiet location where Mycroft would, without a doubt, be waiting.

'Maybe,' Sherlock said. 'I've got some things I need to do first. Can I meet you there in an hour?'

Tom hesitated for just a moment and then agreed, writing the address on a piece of paper for Sherlock, together with brief directions.

'Just come and have a look, that's all I'm asking,' he said, as Sherlock stood pulled on his coat and swung his rucksack onto his shoulder.

Sherlock nodded and headed towards the door. An hour, he had an hour to work out where he was going to go from here - and it certainly wasn't going to be to the hostel. Pausing just outside to pull on his hat and gloves, not wanting to look as if he was too keen to escape, he headed off into the snowy streets.


	5. Chapter 5

The air was sharp and crisp as Sherlock walked out into the quiet streets, the cold biting after the warmth of the hostel. He pulled his scarf up round his face to protect his burning lungs as another spasm of coughing hit him. It was as if London had been somehow both washed clean by the snow and muffled by it, the eery quietness broken only by the intermittent sound of wheels breaking through the grey slush that filled the streets. It was still early, the city not yet fully awake and many people seemed to have decided that the few centimetres of snow that had fallen were a good excuse to stay in bed that morning. Sherlock walked carefully, sticking to the parts of the pavement where the sun had hit, grateful for his rubber-soled boots, not wanting to skid and fall on the ice between the intermittent patches of salt and grit. Despite the eleven hours of sleep the night before, his arms, his legs, even his fingers ached and he felt distinctly unsteady, lurching into a wall at one point, knowing despite his attempt at justification that the slippery pavement had had nothing to do with his loss of balance. He was withdrawing from the benzos and he knew it. Still, that was easily enough remedied if you knew the right people - and Sherlock knew both the people and where to find them.

Despite the come-down from the drugs, he had more energy than he had had for days. It was amazing how much more clearly you could think with a full stomach and after a good night's sleep. He had been literally starving, he realised that now, the cold numbing his already reduced appetite. Moving to find food had felt like too much of an effort, so he had rarely bothered. Some days all he had eaten were the soup and the sandwiches that the shelter outreach workers brought round late in the evening.

He coughed again and pulled his scarf further up round his mouth to muffle it, trying to keep his pace purposeful, trying to look as if he belonged.

The few people on the streets were no longer crossing the road to avoid him. He looked, and smelt, like a normal member of society again, and he wasn't going to miss the opportunity to climb out of the cracks.

He headed for the nearest tube station, fed his last few pounds into the ticket machine and pulled out a zones 1-4 return ticket before heading for the closest barrier. There was CCTV in the tube station he knew, but he wanted to be recognised at this point, so he kept his hood down and helpfully pointed his face towards the cameras. Time to get lost in the crowd later.

He headed south on the Northern Line towards Charing Cross, knowing that the stops at the main rail stations were always the busiest. Sure enough, more people piled on at Tottenham Court Road, and more still at Leicester Square. Sherlock had elected to stay standing, his rucksack wedged between his legs, and he allowed himself to sway a little with the movement of the train carriage as he held onto the strap above his head. He allowed the sway to push him into a Japanese tourist standing next to him as the train jolted to a stop at Charing Cross, and murmured an apology as he relieved the man of the wallet helpfully sticking out of his back pocket, and allowed the tide of people to take him off the train and up the escalator, long before the man had realised that it was missing.

He felt little guilt about the theft. The man was a student but a rich one, judging by his clothing and the quality of the stitching on the wallet which even now was concealed in Sherlock's sleeve. Tourists usually meant cash, and cash was exactly what Sherlock needed.

At the top of the escalator, he headed towards the exit, avoided cameras as he turned round again just short of the barriers, and pulled up his hood before heading for the escalators to the Bakerloo line. One stop Northbound and a repeat of the wallet trick as he got off at Piccadilly Circus availed him of another wallet. Tube trains rarely had cameras in the carriages he knew that and thankfully the guard was nowhere to be found - the carriages too full at the tail end of rush hour to allow him free passage through the carriage to check tickets. This time he headed straight for the Piccadilly Line towards Leicester Square.

Crowds were good; crowds were his friend. Londoners who knew always got off the tube at Leicester Square rather than face the queue for lifts at Covent Garden, but queues suited Sherlock just fine. The crush of people outside the lift doors was disappointingly small, however, and he briefly considered taking the steps instead, but another spasm of coughing made him change his mind. Even his customary habit of walking up the stairs in the tube station two at a time was leaving him breathless today and the thought of the hundred plus steps was too much to contemplate.

He pushed his way into a lift whose doors were just closing. The wallet of the man in front was sticking temptingly out of his jacket pocket - why did people do that? Didn't they know that London was one of the pick-pocketing capitals of the world? As the lift bumped to a stop the man jolted against the wall of the lift and his wallet fell out, straight at Sherlock's feet. He was tempted for just a moment, but the lift was too enclosed, there was too much chance that somebody would notice, and while he couldn't see a camera, he knew they were starting to put them into lifts in light of the IRA threat. There were some risk that it just wasn't worth taking.

'Excuse me,' he said, touching the man's arm and handing his wallet back to him.

'Thanks,' the man said, with a soft Scottish accent. He smiled at Sherlock who swore at himself for allowing himself to become memorable.

He wasn't swearing though when he got outside the station and allowed himself to look at the train ticket he had extricated from the man's wallet before handing it back. An open return to Edinburgh. Now there was an opportunity if there ever was one.

He headed towards the covered market at the back of the more touristy arcades, dodging in and out through the thickening crowds od Christmas Shoppers, hesitating next to an unattended money box on a stall selling screen-printed scarves, as the stall holder chatted to the attendant on the jewellery store next door. She was turned entirely away from Sherlock and it would have been easy - so easy - to avail himself of the contents of the box and yet something told him to resist. Walking on a little further, two community support officers turned into the row from the adjacent arcade and he was glad that he had trusted his instincts. If the woman had shouted out he would have been caught within minutes, and he knew that he was in no state to run either very far or very fast.

He headed towards the back of the market, past the rows of high-end shops and across the cobbled street that led to the 'other' Covent Garden market. The cheap end one, the one that had more traditional markets stalls selling fruit, cheap clothing and if you knew where to look something a little more interesting.

A quiet word with the stall-holder of the watch stand led Sherlock to a man standing drinking coffee in a parking area at the back of the market; white vans jammed in next to each other with barely enough room to open the driver's door between them.

Sherlock nodded to him, recognising him from the market behind his usual pitch. He had bought from him a couple of times before. He called himself Steve, although that almost certainly wasn't his real name.

'Alright?' the man asked. He was white, maybe mid-thirties dressed to blend in with the market traders in a hoodie, parka style jacket and jeans, but the bling was there if you chose to look for it; the designer trainers, the flashy watch. This was a man who was doing well from his chosen trade. Traders at lunchtime and the early evening, clubbers at night. The passing trade in Covent Garden was just how he made up the hours between calls from his more discerning clients.

Sherlock explained what he need, coughing into his scarf as he did so.

'Blueys are in short supply at the moment,' Steve told him. 'I can get you something that will sort out that cough of yours, though - and do the job of the blueys.'

Sherlock was about to shake his head when he was racked by another bout of coughing, this one so severe that it made his head spin and he had to lean against the wall for support. He coughed up a lump of phlegm with a foul taste. When he turned away to spit it into a dark corner, he saw streaks of red and closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass. No, no, no, this couldn't happen. He didn't have time to get ill. He had a plan. He was going to get out of this place, get away from Mycroft, he was going to stay away until his eighteenth birthday when Mycroft would no longer have any control over his life and he would, he hoped, be able to access at least some of the money that his parents had left him. Two weeks; fourteen days to stay hidden and off the grid, and after that Mycroft wouldn't be able to touch him.

Steve was holding out a small bottle of clear liquid. 'Try this, he said. 'On the house. You don't like, you don't pay.

Sherlock took it, registering that the bottle was unlabeled. Of course it was. It had probably held shampoo in a former life, poached from a posh hotel room. The contents, however, were unlikely to be shampoo. At least he hoped not. He upended it into his mouth. The contents slid down his throat like silk and tasted oddly sweet with a bitter aftertaste.

Within minutes, a buzz spread through his body that made him feel as if his feet had left the ground and he was at risk of floating up to the ceiling like a helium balloon. The aching in his body was gone, and there was a pleasant buzz in his head which made him feel as if he could do anything. He blinked and staggered a little. Steve reached out a hand to steady him. 'Watch it,' he said, looking amused. 'Good stuff, innit?'

'What is it?' Sherlock asked, shaking his head to clear the mist from it.

'Liquid gold,' Steve told him with a grin. 'Liquid morphine, at least. Stops you a cough and gives you a buzz like you won't believe.'

Sherlock took a deep breath, then another, despite the cold air his cough was peculiarly absent. Apparently instantly cured.

'How does it work?' he asked, squinting at the few drops left in the bottle, shaking it from side to side, as if he could somehow ascertain the chemical formula by doing so. 'How does it stop you coughing, I mean.'

'No fucking idea,' Steve said with a shrug. 'Good stuff, though. Innit. You want some more?'

'Why not, ' Sherlock said, trying to sound nonchalant.'How much?'

'Tenner for fifty mils.'

'I'll take a hundred.'

'Good call - go slow on it, though, yeah? It's strong stuff if you're not used to it.'

Sherlock gave a slight nod, head still spinning. But despite the buzz, there was still an annoying whispering that wouldn't go away. Those voices, his constant companion for so many months were getting louder by the day, and he knew there was only one way to get rid of them.

'But I need some benzos too. If you haven't got any blueys, I'll take whatever you've got.'

'Roofies any good to you?'

'No.'

'I've got a few of these,' Steve reached unto his inside jacket pocket and looking round to make sure they weren't being watched, pulled out a small baggie of circular white tablets.'

'What are they?' Sherlock asked.

'K-pin,' Steve told him.

'Clonazepam?' Sherlock asked.

'Yeah.'

Sherlock nodded, 'Go on then. How much?'

'Tenner for that bag.'

Sherlock dug into his rucksack and pulled out one of the wallets he had acquired on the tube, pulled out a twenty-pound note and then had to rifle through a sheaf of Japanese notes before he found a tenner.

'You got a way of passing that on?' Steve asked as he handed Ives the baggies and the bottles. 'Only I know a bloke gives good money for credit cards.'

'So do I,' Sherlock lied and he tucked the bottles into his rucksack, baggie into his pocket and walked off whistling.

He felt good, he felt great as he walked away whistling, heading for the piazza itself. The morphine was buzzing in his head, making him feel like invincible.

The contents of the wallets made him feel rich and he stopped at one of the cafes and ordered a coffee and a bacon roll, which he sat and ate at one of the outside tables, warmed by the patio heater. A month ago he would have mocked people who sat outside in December, but now it felt like an immensely civilised thing to be doing. Despite the breakfast he had eaten only a couple of hours ago, he devoured the roll in a matter of minutes and then turned his attention to more pressing matters.

The morphine has dulled the voices in his head for a while, and he had hoped that that would be enough but he could hear them - whispering, commenting on him, making their continuous micro-attacks until he wanted to reach inside his head and pull them out through his ears. As if it could possibly be that simple. But in his pocket was a small bag of solutions. At least, that what was what he hoped.

He resisted the temptation to pull out the baggies of pills and count them. Instead, he manipulated one out of the bag while keeping it safely out of sight in his pocket, and washed it down with a slug of coffee. Black with four sugars. He sat and savoured the rest of the cup, enjoying its sweetness while the buzz of the caffeine combined beautifully with the residual high from the morphine, and the creeping calm of the clonazepam started to creep in. The voices became more and more distant until finally, they became silent.

Draining the last few dregs of coffee, he stood up, pushed his hat back onto his head, swung his rucksack onto his back and headed back towards the tube station. There was a big brave world out there, a world without Mycroft in it, and today he was going to take his first steps towards discovering it.

* * *

Thank you to everyone who has kept reading and reviewing this story despite the prolonged time-line. It hasn't turned out to be quite as seasonal as I'd hoped! The good news is there will be more chapters over the next few days if all goes to plan, so thank you for sticking with it. And small hint - I write faster with reveiws!

This story comes with the obligatory drug warning - they're not big, they're not clever, they trash your life etc, etc. But then I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that...


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock ducked under the least crowded of the arches leading to the Apple Market, and then, suddenly made uncomfortable by the press of the crowd, headed to the northeast end, towards the London Transport Museum. He elected to cut around the outside of the main market with its arcades and piazzas, choosing instead the more open streets that reached around its perimeter, past the London Film Museum and the back of the Royal Opera House, heading for Floral Street.

He had originally planned to head for the Underground, but despite the benzos he was feeling distinctly jittery. He dug into his pocket and slipped another tablet into his mouth, wondering how much was too much. His cough had gone though, cured as if by magic and for that at least he was grateful. His breathing felt free and easy for the first time in days. No matter, he had time. It was still early. Plenty of time for a slow stroll to a station before finishing the day with a train ride.

The world felt shiny new under the December sunshine, the snow melted to slush by the grit on the streets crunched comfortingly beneath his feet as he walked, elated by the beauty of the day. He tipped his head back and allowed the sun to bathe his face for just a moment, narrowingly missing bumping into a lamp post in the process. He was well aware that the morphine was at least partly responsible for this new-found optimism but he didn't care. He was seventeen years old, and his future was all his own. He didn't have to listen to Mycroft or anyone else. In a few short days he would be eighteen and after that Mycroft couldn't touch him. What he needed was a way to get away entirely, to disappear for a few weeks, a few months even, find a solicitor, find a way to access his inheritance and then - well then he would decide what he was going to with the rest of his life.

He swallowed hard at the flood of emptiness that filled him at that thought. _How would he fill his days? Who would he talk to? What would he do?_

He shoved his hands into his pockets, walking faster, concentrating of the burn of the cold air in his lungs. He would find himself somewhere to live - a hotel room to start with, a flat later. The credit cards in his pocket would be worth good money, Steve had been right. There was no way to trace them back to him and he could sell them on when he got to Edinburgh. And that was in addition to the three hundred odd pounds in cash that he had found in the wallets that he had acquired from the tourists of on the tube. And there were plenty more where they came from. No reason to think that Edinburgh tourists wouldn't be just as easy to relieve of their possessions as those in London.

As if to prove a point, he allowed himself to drift into the crowds at the far end of Neal Street, bustling with Christmas shoppers their hands full of carrier bags; too full, as it turned out, to keep an eye on their handbags. Within minutes, Sherlock had two bulging purses in his posession. It was almost too easy. He felt something akin to guilt, an unfamiliar sensation. Ignoring it, he pulled out the stack of notes from the first purse, swiftly tossed it into a nearby litter bin and then repeated the act with the second. He told himself that it wouldn't do to be caught with multiple purses in his posession, that the last thing that he needed was to be done for petty theft, but in reality, he knew that there was a deeper reason. His own Christmas was likely to be bleak and lonely; he didn't want to destroy somebody elses by spoiling their day of meaningless consumer spending. Other people seemed to enjoy that sort of thing. The first purse was rapidly followed by the second as he imagined Mycroft's voice in his head _. 'Sentiment, Sherlock? What use is sentiment?_ '

' _Not sentiment, logic,_ ' he told the invisible Mycroft and the whispering voice of his darker companion; the one who told him to steal, the one who told him to lie, the one who told him that if you kept people away then they couldn't hurt you.

Because it wasn't sentiment to dispose of stolen goods. If it had been sentiment, he reasoned, then he would have thrown the whole thing in the bin, or dropped it on the street in the hope that it would find its way back to its original owner. If it had been true sentiment - or worse still remorse, then he would have done a spot of reverse pickpocketing and returned the purse to its original owner. That was a skill that had served him well over the years, particularly during the harder years at school - liberating items from one individual, planting them in the pocket of another. It was amazing how satisfying stirring the ants nest could be. He had told himself it was about survival - a way to punish his tormentors, to keep the upper hand, but there had been times when he had done it just to stand back and watch the reaction. And what kind of twisted individual did that make him?

' _Psychopath_ ,' murmured one voice.

' _Murderer_ ,' whispered another.

But he wasn't. Not that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He wouldn't go that far. No matter what, he would never take a life, he told himself. Not even if...

He knew the way this dark spiral went, the depths to which his mind could plunge him. He reached into his pocket, pulled out two more tablets, considered and added a third, and then crammed them into his mouth without hesitation, walking faster and humming under his breath to distract himself from the voices until the tablets kicked in.

Clonazepam wasn't a benzo that he would choose to use again. The buzz was good, but they didn't do what he needed them to; they didn't stop the voices. He briefly considered heading back to the market behind Oxford Street, to see what he could score there, but he needed to focus on the plan - get to Kings Cross, get on the train, get to Edinburgh before Mycroft and his minions picked up the trail and came to find him.

The initial elation from the morphine was beginning to wear off as he headed up toward the London School of Economics. His legs were aching and the bench inside the bus shelter looked very good indeed. He allowed himself a brief respite, stretching his legs out in front of him, resting his aching head back against the perspex wall. His eyes drifted closed and he only realised that he'd fallen asleep when he was jerked out of an inadvertent doze by the squeal of brakes.

Several people pushed past him to board the bus. The shelter must have been half-full and he wondered how long he had slept for. A quick glance at the timetable on the wall of the shelter told him that the bus was going in the right direction, and so feeling dazed and distinctly unwell now, he climbed aboard and handed the bus conductor a handful of coins for his fare.

He slumped down in a vacant double seat towards the back of the bus, too weary to even take his rucksack off his back, relying on the discomfort it caused as it pressed against his spine to keep him awake. He coughed slightly, then more vigorously, a deep insistent rattle coming from deep in his chest that went on and on, leaving him gasping for breath. He wanted to pull the bottle of magic liquid out from his rucksack and take a swig - anything to make it stop, but he knew that it would only make him more sleepy and he had to stay awake, more now than ever. He had to get to the station, had to get on that train, and then - then he could sleep. He could sleep for the five hours or so that it would take him to get to Edinburgh, and then when he got there he could find a hotel, no, a bed and breakfast - less chance of being picked up on cameras, and he could crawl into a comfortable bed and sleep and sleep.

Sleep. His eyelids felt heavy at the very thought of it and he dug his nails into the palm of his hand to wake himself up, wriggling his toes in his heavy boots, leaning back against his bag, anything to stay awake. The vent above him blowing warm air onto him wasn't helping his struggle, and he rested his forehead against the cold glass of the window, forcing himself to focus on the world outside. They were passing Russell Square now, and he idly counted blue plaques as they went, wondering why such a small area had inspired so much brilliance, or rather so much acknowledged brilliance because at seventeen he was already wise enough to know the difference. The bus rattled on towards Tavistock Square and the imposing building of the British Medical Association. More passengers got on the bus, but Sherlock noticed with amusement that the seat next to him remained stubbornly empty, despite the people now standing holding onto straps at the front of the bus. His cough seems to have one advantage at least.

The bus swung right past a Victorian church and rattled on up the road towards the station. Each stop seemed to take an eternity, the squeal of the brakes, the hissing release of the hydraulics as the bus stopped, the slow shuffle of the new arrivals, the clink of coins in the plastic cup as the driver was paid the fares, the slow whine of the ticket machine. The noises seemed to resonate in his aching head, and he was tired, so tired, every part of his body aching and it would feel so good to sleep.

He jerked himself awake again and stood, making his way to the front of the bus, hanging onto the overhead straps as he went, availing himself, just to wake himself up, of a wallet sticking out of the coat pocket of a man in his thirties, too busy chatting up a young mother with a toddler in a buggy who had perched herself on the low luggage rack to notice a scruffy teenager brushing his way past him to disembark by the British Library stop. Of all of the thefts that he had made that day, this was the one that Sherlock felt least guilty about, slipping the wallet into his pocket even before he got off the bus. The surge of adrenaline from the act woke him up almost as much as the biting cold that hit him as soon as the doors opened, and he headed towards the main entrance of the library before veering round it to the side. If the theft was linked back to him then at least they'd be following him into the library and not to his real destination.

Mycroft would find him eventually, he knew that, but if he could keep moving then he had just a chance of staying ahead of the game. He walked through the courtyard to the left of the main building, taking a side gate onto Ossulston place and then following the line of the building round, taking a circular route down Brill Place and then Pancras Road to enter St Pancras station. It wasn't his eventual destination, but he took the time to appreciate its Victorian splendor none the less. This was what proper architecture should look like, he thought. A young man a few years older than him was playing one of the pianos in the main concourse with blistering speed. Chopin, of course. Despite the poor quality of the piano he played it brilliantly, a music student at the Royal College or the Royal Academy without a doubt. And yet he played only for his own enjoyment, shaking his head at the tourist clinking a handful of coins uncertainly. These pianos were for people to play and enjoy, not for busking. Sherlock lingered for longer than he should have, intrigued by the man and his flying fingers. Sherlock himself was proficient at the piano, but not like this, never like this. His fingers were made for the violin and while he had passed his Grade 8 piano only last year with ease, this level of playing was something else entirely.

The man looked up at the end of the movement and grinned at him, mistaking Sherlock's admiration for his playing for something else. Sherlock flushed and moved on, embarrassed not just by the unwanted attention, but for having made himself noticeable once again. He dived into the gents toilets, where in the relative privacy of a cubicle he allowed himself another swig of his magic liquid. Almost immediately he felt an intense flush of well-being and the suppression of his cough seemed almost like an added bonus after that. Sitting on the closed toilet seat, he flicked through the wallet that he had pinched from the man on the bus. It contained a healthy amount of cash as he had suspected - wide boys always preferred a sheaf of notes to plastic and this man was no exception. The cards and wallet he disposed of in a bin on the concourse, tempted to give them to one of the homeless people huddling on benches close to the platforms, enjoying the relative warmth before they were moved on. They could make use of the cards, he knew, but he couldn't risk being recognised. He had made that mistake too many times already today.

He allowed himself a brief stop at a coffee shop to pick up a triple expresso with as much sugar as he could dissolve in it to offset the sedative effects of the oramorph. Sipping the coffee gratefully, he headed directly across the station towards the exit on the opposite side of the station. Cutting through St Pancras to Kings Cross had been a deliberate ploy, in the hope that if he was picked up on the CCTV cameras then at least Mycroft would assume that he was traveling from St Pancras itself. That should spread the search for him a little if nothing else.

The cold air made his chest ache and he muffled another spasm of coughing in his scarf, the oramorph seems less effective this time. He felt feverish, a sensation that he remembered well from childhood illnesses; his skin felt too tight for his bones, his legs oddly light, as if he was walking in clouds, his neck prickled and there was a buzzing in his ears that's knew had nothing to do with the drugs that he had taken.

Focus, he had to focus. He walked across the road, narrowly missing being clipped by a taxi in his hurry to get across to Kings Cross. He headed purposefully towards the departure board and saw to his glee that there was a train to Edinburgh leaving in fifteen minutes. He made for the platform at the far end of the station, open return ticket in hand. He was almost at the barrier when he saw them - two men who could only be detectives in ill-fitting cheap high street suits, showing a picture to passing travelers. ' _Have you seen this boy_?' He could imagine their questioning and the school portrait taken only a few months and seemingly decades of life experience ago that the sheet of paper in their hands would contain.

For a moment he considered risking it. He was close, so close, the train was waiting on the platform. He could make it, could get on board, find a quiet corner, lock himself in the loo even, stay hidden until the train pulled away, and then there would be several hours of glorious sleep to be had while the train carried him all the way up north to Scotland, and freedom.

He hesitated for just a moment too long. Just as he was turning to walk away, one of the detectives glanced in his direction and caught his eye. He saw a flash of recognition, and then he was running as fast as he could, away from the escalating shouts, away from the crowds, towards the entrance to the underground station. He sprinted down the escalators, head spinning, chest aching with the assault on his already protesting lungs, and by some miracle made it to the bottom of the escalators before the detectives. Letting the momentum from the escalators propel him forward, he ran across the ticketing hall, vaulted the barriers and headed as fast as he could for the platforms, somehow managing to get through the train doors just before they closed and carried him away. Wrong train, wrong direction, but it was an escape none the less.


	7. Chapter 7

Sherlock slumped down onto the nearest seat, breathing in short fast pants, chest aching from the exertion of his rapid escape. He allowed himself precisely four minutes of recovery - the time taken to get between two tube stations in Central London.

Almost groaning with the effort, he forced himself to his feet at Euston, and switched to the other branch of the Northern Line to get to Warren Street. His only aim after that was to confuse the hell out of Mycroft's men and make sure that anybody who had managed to track him down would lose him again equally fast.

From Euston, he travelled down to Tottenham Court Road, took the Central Line to Bond Street, then changed to the Jubilee Line as far as Baker Street. From there, he took the Bakerloo Line to Paddington, then the District and Circle down to Notting Hill Gate. He had memorised the entire tube map as a child and he was grateful for it now. He couldn't have said where he was going, or where his final destination would be. All he could think about was getting lost and staying lost. He changed his appearances as best he could as he traveled, stuffing his coat into his rucksack, substituting it for a second hoodie, taking off his hat, carrying his rucksack in his hand to make it less noticeable on the CCTV cameras that peppered every station.

He had intended to change again at Earl's Court, heading back towards Central London and the Southbank. Sometimes the best place to get lost was in a crowd, and there were more homeless people on the Southbank than in any other area of London. Besides, he could score what he needed there - lorazepam, nitrazepam, and maybe even some more of the oramorph which was proving so useful at keeping his cough at bay. Satisfied with his plan, he took another swig, noticing as he did so that his first bottle was almost empty.

He allowed his eyes to close just for a moment, as the warmth and swaying of the train took him to his destination. Two minutes, he promised himself, just two minutes of rest before the next change.

...

He woke with a start to find an empty carriage and a cleaner glaring at him as she threw plastic bottles and empty sandwich packets into a black bin bag. He scrambled up and off the train, mumbling his apologies. He was too drowsy to even be able to focus on the station signs, his head pounding as he could think only of getting out of the tube and into the fresh air.

He walked up the steps, patting his pockets for his tube ticket he had bought at Covent Garden and feeding it into the barrier, praying to a God he didn't believe in that they would open, that the ticket that he had bought that morning covered whichever tube zone he now found himself in. The seconds of the barrier's indecisions seemed to stretch beyond all that was possible as he struggled to stay on his feet. He couldn't remember when he had needed sleep more. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, the barrier clicked opened and he walked gratefully walked through, blinking in the sunlight. He looked back at the station sign almost as an afterthought. Richmond, he was in Richmond. He had quite literally reached the end of the line. Random as if might be, it had the benefit of being one of the last places that Mycroft would think to look for him, and he was too tired and felt too _unusual_ to contemplate continuing his journey further.

He headed down Richmond Hill, unsure where he was going, all of his previous optimism gone. He could think only of finding a place to lie down, to sleep. Once he had slept he could work out what he was going to do next. The voices in his head were whispering, telling him that he was a failure, telling him that it was pointless running, that he might as well give up now. He walked past two policemen close to the station, and averted his face, convinced they would be looking for him. He kept walking until the shops ran out and he found himself at the main gate to Richmond Park. The light was failing and the park was almost deserted apart from a few hardy dog walkers and set off down the track. His mother used to bring him here, years ago to see the deer, vestige of Henry the Eighth's hunting days. He headed for Sidmouth Wood, shivering now and not just with the cold of the day. He felt dizzy and his legs felt strangely disconnected from him. He needed to find somewhere, anywhere to lie down, and he thought he knew just the place.

As he made his way into the woods, the trees blotted out the last of the light. He followed the path through to the centre of the wood, then took the left hand fork, tripping over tree branches on numb feet until he reached the log store, just as it had been when he had a child, and to the side, just as he remembered, the gardener's hut, with its window obscured by the green mould that had crept across from the wooden walls. He walked round the back of the hut to find the door - padlocked, of course it was. Setting his rucksack down on a fallen tree branch, he pulled off his glove with his teeth and rummaged into the bottom of his bag to find something, anything, to pick the lock with.

He had learned to throw nothing away on the streets and he was grateful for it now. He found a wire tie, used to secure a bag of sandwiches from the shelter and stripped the plastic coating off, but it proved too soft to trigger the locking mechanism. Pushing back his frustration he rummaged again in the bag and then in the pockets of his coat with increasing agitation until his fingers closed on a badge that had adorned the coat when he had brought it in the charity shop. Shoved into his pocket and forgotten it was going to be worth its weight in gold.

It took him less than a minute to trigger the mechanism of the padlock with the badge pin. The door spun open to reveal a rudimentary tool shed, with a small Primus stove and a kettle for tea, and a pile of hessian sacks in the corner. It was still cold inside, but at least it was insulated from the wind and he was too tired to care. He stumbled towards the pile of sacks and curled up on them, pulling a couple of them over him as makeshift covers. He reached into the pocket of his coat and took a couple of the clonazepam to silence the voices that were still abusing him for his stupidity. Then five minutes later when they were failed to shut up, another four, the last of his stash, and almost as an afterthought washed them down with the second bottle of oramorph. He just wanted to sleep, to not have to think about what he was going to do tomorrow and for the world to go away and leave him alone.

His last thought as he drifted off to sleep was of how surprisingly warm and comfortable a pile of hessian sacks could be, and of how very pissed off Mycroft was going to be that he had given his men the slip once again. He fell asleep with a smile on his lips at the very thought of it.

* * *

Short chapter this time as events hurtle towards their conclusion. To be concluded soon!


	8. Chapter 8

This chapter comes with apologies for the long wait! I wanted to get it right and give the story the ending that it deserves.

It does contain references to abuse, so if that's likely to upset you then please don't read. Happy to provide an abridged version if anybody wants to PM me for one.

And with that warning done, I hope that you all enjoy it. And Merry Christmas! Only four months late...

* * *

Sherlock woke from uneasy dreams with a throat that felt as if it was on fire, a pounding headache, and a raging thirst.

But as he lay there, unwilling to open his eyes, he contemplated how comfortable the bed he was lying on was and how strangely smooth hessian sacks could feel against your skin. He wriggled his toes and realised to his disconcertion that they came into contact not with slightly sweaty boots as he had expected, but with clean sheets. Gone too was the smell of old sack, leaf mold and damp wood, replaced with clean air and just a hint of cleaning fluid. He opened his eyes to check his surroundings only to rapidly screw them shut again against the bright lights. Wherever he was, it certainly wasn't in the gardener's shed in Richmond Park that he had fallen asleep in.

'I know that you're awake,' came a voice from beside the bed. 'There's no point in pretending to be asleep.'

Sherlock groaned and pulled the pillow over his head.

'Small tip for you, little brother -' Mycroft's voice. Definitely Mycroft. 'If you don't want to be found, don't leave a broken padlock lying on the ground outside the shed you're hiding in, and don't carry a book with you that has both your name and a bookplate from the family library in it.'

An edge of disapproval crept into his voice as he added, 'And while I'm impressed by your choice of reading matter, a nineteenth-century edition of Herodotus in the original Greek is hardly the book to be carting halfway across the country in a rucksack.'

Sherlock lay silent and still. If he had known his brother less well he might have hoped he would take the hint and go away. This being Mycroft, he knew that he would stay, and found himself oddly comforted by the realisation.

Rather than the frustration that he might have predicted at having been found, what he felt was an overwhelming sense of relief at being warm, and safe, and in a comfortable bed, and in knowing that he no longer had to be responsible for himself. He had proved that he could survive in the adult world, but there was something to be said for allowing yourself to be looked after, for falling back into the safety of childhood.

He pulled the pillow off his head and looked at his brother. Mycroft looked tired and far older than his twenty-five years. His shirt was slightly crumpled as if he had retrieved it from the laundry bin and thrown it on in a hurry, his customary tie was missing and he was wearing a pair of old corduroy trousers usually reserved for weekends at home at Cantley Hall. More telling, he obviously hasn't shaved for several days, and he was wearing the horn-rimmed glasses that he hated wearing in public, taking his poor eye-sight as a sign of weakness. There were deep purple shadows under his eyes which the glasses only highlighted. He looked like a man who had been working without sleep for the best part of a week, which in all probability, Sherlock realised, he had. Although this time his sleep-deprivation was not due to ensuring national security, but rather to finding his errant little brother and returning him home safely.

He felt an unsettling stab of compassion for his brother, followed by a strange urge to apologise for what he had put him through. Both were unfamiliar and uncomfortable sensations. But apologising to Mycroft just wasn't what he did, no matter how tired or ill he was, and so he remained silent, not trusting himself to speak.

'You could have just phoned me,' Mycroft said, with that poor attempt at concealing frustration that Sherlock knew so well.

This at least had the positive effect of removing any irrational desire Sherlock had to apologise. He elected instead for silently glaring at his brother.

'Don't glare at me, Sherlock, I'm being serious.'

'I screwed up,' Sherlock spat the words out, his voice sounding oddly scratchy even to him. His throat burned and the effort of talking provoked a spasm of coughing that made his chest feel as if it was on fire. He curled into a ball and waited for the spasm to pass.

When he eventually opened his eyes again, a plastic straw was hovering next to his mouth as if summoned. He drank the water that it offered gratefully before realising that the hand that held the cup was Mycroft's.

'Thank you,' he muttered, brushing at an irritation in his nose where his fingers came into contact with a plastic oxygen tube secured to his face. There was a cannula in his arm connected to a bag of clear fluid.

'Where am I?' he asked reluctantly.

Mycroft sighed. 'Hospital. Where else?'

'I've worked that out, Mycroft. Which hospital?'

'Kingston. In the private wing after a great deal of debate and the need for some serious escalation up the chain of command. They wanted you under the paediatricians, as you are still officially a child but the paediatricians do not take private patients. The facts that you had been sleeping rough on the streets of London, had more drugs in your system that your average drug-dealer and needed to be checked for infestation helped to sway them to the benefits of a private room under the care of the adult physicians. Which, it could be argued, is more than you deserve. The thought of holding vigil by your bedside on a general ward full of incontinent old men was, however, more than I could bear. You could argue that the private room was as much for my own comfort as yours.'

Sherlock lay still, assimilating the information he had been offered. He ached all over and he felt so weak that even turning over to avoid Mycroft's gaze seemed like too much of an effort. His head throbbed, his throat burned, he felt exhausted, but at the bottom of all of that, what he pushed the physical sensations aside was a sense of deep and immense calm. And a silence that he had not experienced for weeks.

'The voices - they've gone,' he said aloud, more to himself that to Mycroft.

'Wonderful what a little haloperidol will do isn't it?' Mycroft said dryly. 'When they picked you up they thought that you were delirious but I recognised the theme behind your ramblings. James Harrison has been informed and has been advising your clinical team by telephone,' he said, naming the psychiatrist who had looked after Sherlock the previous year during his stay in Elmhurst psychiatric hospital.

Sherlock closed his eyes again. Medication, psychiatrists, he had been here before. He didn't want to go there again. Even the thought of Elmhurst brought a rush of fear and emotion that he had spent months trying to suppress.

After his mother's death, he had spiraled into an episode of psychotic depression that had landed him in a psychiatric unit for several months. It wasn't something that he liked to dwell on, in fact, he tried very hard not to think about it at all. Thoughts of Elmhurst came with flashes of memory, of days spent curled up in bed convinced that he was drowning in thick mud or being eaten alive by demons, of voices within his head that so loud that he had tried to rip out fistfuls of his hair in the hope that he could pull them out of his head in the process. He has been told that many patients experienced depression as an absolute emptiness; his had been a howling despair that had transmuted to an almost physical pain. Dark, consuming and apparently endless.

The treatment that they had subjected him to in Elmhurst had been almost worse than the illness itself; they had given him electric shock treatment - high voltages of electricity applied directly to his brain designed to jolt out the misery and the voices and as it turned out large chunks of his memory. He would wake after treatment sessions disorientated and panicking with no recollection of where he was, and spend the next forty-eight hours gradually piecing together the information that he was given with a throbbing head and aching joints. Then just when he was beginning to feel as if he had regained some sort of hold on reality, he would be taken back to that room, subjected to more shocks and the whole cycle would start all over again.

He had begged them to stop, but he was deemed incapable of making his own decisions, and besides, they had his father's blessing and his signature on their piece of paper and it seemed that was all that was required. And when it has finally stopped, when he finally began to believe that he had some chance of getting well, of getting home, he had started to remember. And what he had remembered - about his father, about what had been done to him, had led to his father requesting more shocks and trying to keep him in Elmhurst permanently. For who would believe the word of a psychotic teenager over a peer of the realm?

And the answer was sitting next to him. Mycroft had believed him. Mycroft, notified by a small number of staff at the institution who has risked their jobs and their careers to protect him, had got Sherlock out. He had stood up to his father and appealed Sherlock's Mental Health Act section with a judge, had turned up at Elmhurst in the middle of the night, brandishing the paperwork, loaded Sherlock who was so drugged by this point that he could hardly walk into his car and had taken him home.

Sherlock's own abuse at the hands of his father had turned out to be only a small part of a wider circle of abuse, the tendrils of which had reached into the highest tiers of society. And his father had been the spider at the centre of the web, pulling the strings, orchestrating the deals. Mycroft has told him only what he wanted to know, and what he had wanted to know was very little. That his father had been prepared to have him branded as insane and locked up permanently in order to protect himself was one thing, Sherlock had learned to accept that this was just the way that his fathers twisted head worked. His father would always and forever be at the centre of his own universe and everyone else he came across were just chess pieces, to be pushed across the board or sacrificed for his own greater purposes. What bothered him more, what he still could not bear to contemplate, were the other boys who had been involved. He suspected there were many, but he didn't ask and Mycroft, respecting his wishes and watching him with a wary eye whenever the subject was raised, didn't tell him.

His father had suffered a massive stroke shortly before his release from Elmhurst. Mycroft always told him that he would have got him out anyway, but Sherlock didn't have his confidence. He was aware that it was a combination of luck and the loyalty of the few that enabled him to escape. He wasn't going to risk his luck a second time. He was never going back to that place, or anywhere like it.

It had taken him months to return to some semblance of a normal life. He was still meant to be taking medication, but his medication had been at home at Cantley Hall, and while benzodiazepines had proved easy to get hold of on the streets, antipsychotics and antidepressants were another question. Not that he had tried. Not that he had even thought to ask. He had been glad to be free of them, to have his head clear of the fug, and on the streets, he had needed to have his wits about him. Not that he had been taking them regularly in the weeks before the interviews anyway, trying to reduce it on his own - half a tablet, a quarter of a tablet. His escape to London had only speeded up a process that he had been halfway to completing anyway.

His psychiatrist, James Harrison, would be frustrated with him, he knew, but he wouldn't show his frustration. He would hide it behind measured silences and careful reflective questioning until Sherlock pushed him to admit that he thought that he had screwed up. And he didn't need that and didn't want that. He just wanted everyone to go away and leave him alone. But not with the voices, he was glad that those at least had gone.

He glanced over at Mycroft who was watching his expression and reading all of his inner dialogue in his face, no doubt. He really did need to get better at hiding what he felt. It was a skill that his brother had mastered well and he envied it.

Mycroft raised an eyebrow at him as if to ask if he was finished.

'What's wrong with me?' Sherlock asked, trying to pull his mind back to the present.

'Hypothermia, pneumonia and an accidental overdose of opiates and benzodiazepines,' Mycroft told him in clipped tones. 'I ensured that the word accidental featured prominently on your notes. I assured them that had you wished to end your life you would have done it more conclusively.

'Tell me that I'm right, Sherlock.' The final five words were almost spat out in a mixture of anger and - Sherlock had to check Mycroft's expression to make sure - emotion?

'Sherlock?' there was a warning edge to Mycroft's voice, 'Tell me what were you trying to achieve - please.'

Please? Mycroft never said please. Sherlock looked at his brother and saw the concern etched on his face, and realised that the monster that he had been running away from did not exist. Mycroft, his brother Mycroft, had got him out of Elmhurst despite his father's best efforts to keep him there. He had brought him home to Cantley Hall, he had tried his best to support Sherlock through his recovery, no matter how hard Sherlock had tried to push him away, he had hired him tutors and found him a private college to prepare him for his Cambridge interviews. And more, he had tried to parent Sherlock - clumsily, inexpertly, often in a manner that was more controlling than supportive, but he had done it none the less.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered, and hid his face in the pillow, hoping that Mycroft wouldn't notice that his cheeks were wet, blaming the tears on exhaustion, knowing how his brother hated emotion.

'You didn't answer my question,' Mycroft told him, after several minutes of silence, and the flat imperiousness of this jerked Sherlock back through regret to irritation, a far more comfortable emotion.

'I wasn't trying to kill myself,' he told him snappily. 'I just wanted to sleep.' And that was true, wasn't it? He thought that it was true, although maybe when it came to it, he had just been too tired to care.

'And you nearly achieved that - permanently.'

'If you're just here to lecture me, Mycroft, why don't you just piss off!' The last words were almost shouted and brought on another fit of coughing that had him gasping for breath and made the monitor he was attached to beep alarmingly. He was aware of Mycroft going to the door and returning with a nurse, who sat him up with the aid of the electric bed, and replaced his nasal oxygen with a facial mask, blasting him with oxygen that he sucked on gratefully.

Mycroft remained silent hovering by the door to the room as if he was reluctant to stay but unwilling to leave, while the nurse did whatever it was that nurses do, documented everything on his chart and after a murmured conversation with Mycroft, left the room.

'The nurse informs me that I should try not to upset you,' Mycroft said calmly, reclaiming his seat by the bed. 'Fortunately, this is the private wing and I am footing the bill. I am also your legal guardian, although I suspect that the former is the primary reason that I have not yet been asked to leave, and why I am sufficiently convinced of her discretion to be able to show you this.'

He reached into the pocket of his tweed jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag of green plant fibres which he tossed with an air of contempt onto the bed, inches away from Sherlock's nose.

'When I told you to attempt to improved your social skills by integrating with the other students, I didn't mean that you should smoke marijuana behind the bike sheds with them,' he said. 'I thought you were marginally more intelligent than that. James Harrison assures me that this is almost certainly the cause of your auditory hallucinations, by the way, drug induced psychosis. Common - and reversible, with discontinued use.'

Sherlock closed his eyes in relief. He wasn't going mad. It wasn't going to come back. If he stopped smoking the weed, the voices would go away.

'Tell me that you're going to stop.'

Sherlock nodded, silently, miserably, not trusting himself to speak.

'You should have told me, Sherlock,' Mycroft said, and there was an edge of sadness to his voice that Sherlock couldn't miss.

'You were busy,' he mumbled. 'I was just trying to fit in. Wasn't that what you told me to do? To fit in?'

' _And I liked it_ ,' was what he couldn't say, _'I liked the way it made me feel, it made me feel normal, it made me feel as if I belonged_.'

'So - opiates, benzodiazepines, marijuana, anything else I should know about?'

Sherlock shook his head silently.

'Why did you stop taking your medication?' Mycroft asked.

'I just wanted to be normal.'

'Why on earth would you want that?'

'Do you never just want to be like everyone else?

'To be a goldfish, swimming round and round without any concept of how limited their tank is? No. And neither should you. We are neither of us goldfish, Sherlock and never will be, irrespective of how many psychoactive substances you ingest.'

Sherlock closed his eyes and lay still, willing sleep to come. He had had enough of being lectured for one day. He just wanted to sleep and recover and then get out of this place; back to Cantley Hall, to his room and his books and his own personal lab and all that he had left behind.

'Tell me what happened?' Mycroft said.

'You know what happened. I'm sure that you have reports in triplicate.'

'Perhaps I should rephrase that. I am fully aware of what happened in terms of timeline of events. What I want to know is why it happened.'

'So that you can tell me off again?'

Mycroft sighed. 'Sherlock, believe it or not, I do have your best interests at heart. Now just tell me, or I swear to God, I will set the local psychiatrists on you. And I can guarantee that they will be less understanding than Dr Harrison.

Sherlock scowled, considered, and realising that Mycroft had never once failed to carry through any of his threats, began.

'The interview went well to start with. They asked me about chemistry, we discussed a couple of experiments, I did a couple of equations for them. There were three interviewers - a tall scruffy man who sat in the corner and said little; I didn't catch his name. Then there was Professor Beyton, the organic chemistry professor who seemed sensible enough and Professor Johns who asked more challenging questions and kept looking at me strangely.

'All of this happened because he looked at you _strangely_?' Mycroft cut in with an edge of exasperation to his voice.

'No! Of course not, let me finish. Did you know that Professor Johns was an associate of our father?'

Mycroft looked at his brother sharply, 'I wasn't aware of that, no. If I had been, I would have intervened. I don't recall his name from any of the investigations.'

Investigations. Mycroft's shorthand for the extensive and painful exploration of the affairs of Viscount Richard Holmes which were still ongoing and had turned up enough dirt to keep the red-topped tabloids in business for months. Not that they would ever gained access to the vast majority. With Mycroft in charge, press access was strictly limited. There were plenty of court orders in place to ensure that.

Sherlock swallowed hard, pushing back the physical sensation of nausea that always accompanied any reminder of what had happened to him at the hands of his father. With the nausea came an illogical desire to scream as loudly as he could. Dr Harrison told him that this was an understandable visceral reaction to what had happened to him, to the abuse that he had suffered. The desire to scream was because he hadn't been able to at the time, or when he had, his screams had gone unheard and unheeded. The nausea - well that was another thing that Sherlock didn't want to dwell on for longer than he has to. He pushed it aside and took several deep breaths as he had been taught. Deep breath in, hold for the count of two, breathe out for the count of seven and repeat. He could almost feel Mycroft's concerned gaze on him as he took another breath and another. After the sixth, he was ready to continue.

'He asked me at the end of the interview if I was the son of Viscount Richard Holmes,' he said, struggling to keep his voice steady, not daring to look at Mycroft. 'When I said yes, he informed me with a patronising little smile what a wonderful man my father had been, and told his colleagues as an aside that he had been the very man to procure anything that you might require, no matter how obscure.

'And then he laughed. He laughed, Mycroft, and looked at me as if he was wondering if I had been -'

'Procured?' Mycroft finished with distaste. And the tension in his jaw betrayed him, his usual attempt at keeping the emotion out of his face defeated. He turned his face aside, as if aware of what he was doing, and Sherlock thought that he heard him swearing softly under his breath.

When he turned back, several minutes later, his face had regained its normal mask of calm.

'No, I wasn't informed of that part of the conversation,' Mycroft told him. 'Neither Dr Johns or Dr Beyton thought to mention it. I suspect as a result of a collusion between them. An omission that I assure you will be followed up. I was simply informed that you had accused him of being a pervert, thrown several books and a model of the human brain at his head and jumped out of the window. Fortunate that the interview was being held on the ground floor.'

'I had to get out of there,' Sherlock said.

'I appreciate that, and I will ensure that the man is dealt with appropriately, but why run away, Sherlock? There was a car waiting for you outside the college. Instead, you elected to cut round the back the college, climb over a wall and take a train to London? A tad dramatic don't you think?'

'What would you have had me do, Mycroft? Shake their hands and thank them for the insults?'

He was shouting now but found that he didn't care. He could have thumped his brother but fortunately didn't have the strength.

Mycroft gave him the look. The one that told him to calm down. The one that would lead to patronising suggestions to control his breathing and start behaving like a rational human being and not a basket case. The one that suggested that he was over-reacting.

He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and calmed himself down. No point in giving Mycroft ammunition for any more digs about psychiatrists or sedation.

'You knew where I'd gone?' he asked when he finally trusted himself to speak.

'Of course, I knew where you'd gone. I tracked you down after a couple of days, and made efforts to ensure your safety.'

Sherlock considered this for a moment, his mind tracking swiftly through the people he had interacted with. It didn't take him long to deduce the identity of Mycroft's mole.

'Tom - Tom was a plant?' He allowed himself to feel a little smug at having his suspicions confirmed. Not just paranoia after all.

Was he mistaken or was there an edge of pride in Mycroft's voice in Sherlock working it out. A sign that at last, he had started to pay attention to his repeated instructions to observe.

'Yes, well done,' Sherlock tried hard not to feel patronised. 'One of our newer recruits,' Mycroft continued. 'What did you make of him?'

Sherlock snorted. 'Beginners errors,' he said airily, not wanting to betray exactly how long it had taken him to work it out. 'Too many things that didn't add up. Wrong hair products for a start. Why didn't you pull me in sooner?'

'It took a while to confirm you were who we thought you were,' Mycroft told him. 'Can't go scooping random young vagrants up off the streets without causing a stir. Besides, I was intrigued to see how good your survival skills were.'

Sherlock stares at his brother in fury. 'Did I pass your _test_?' he asked.

Mycroft sighed. 'You ended up with a drug habit and pneumonia and nearly dying of hypothermia in a garden shed, Sherlock. I think that we can write that one off as a serious error of judgment - for both of us.'

Sherlock glared at Mycroft, who glared back before his expression softened, and he dropped his eyes to his clasped hands, looking distinctly uncomfortable. 'I owe you an apology, Sherlock.'

Now here was a first. 'For what?' Sherlock asked.

'For not being someone you felt you could come to when it all went wrong, and for allowing you to stay out on the streets for so long. For not finding you and bringing you home sooner. For not keeping you safe.'

Sherlock looked at his brother in confusion. 'Do you think that's your job? To keep me safe?'

'Always,' came the simple reply. 'Although my job may have been made remarkably easier by something which arrived in the post while you were gone. He reached into his pocket and withdrew an envelope and threw it into the bed where it landed centimetres from Sherlock's nose.

'What's this?' He asked suspiciously.

'Open it and see.'

He reached out a hand and picked up the envelope. It was suspiciously thick and bore the postmark of Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge.

'But I didn't apply there.'

'No, you didn't.

'So why are they writing to me?'

'Open it and see.'

'Cautiously he tore open the envelopes to be greeted by a thick sheaf of paperwork, a leaflet entitled _'Guide for New Students_ ' and a letter which began, _'Dear Mr Holmes, I am delighted...'_

He looked up at Mycroft in shock. 'Did you do this?' he asked. 'Because I told you not to pull strings, Mycroft. I told you that I wanted to get in on my own or not at all.'

''Absolutely nothing to do with me, I assure you,' Mycroft told him. 'Dr Hughes, who has a fellowship at Caius, was sitting in on your interview after one of the King's tutors called in sick at the last moment. I suspect that he was the scruffy chap you described as staying silent in the corner. Fortunately for you, he cannot abide Professor Johns and has been aware for some time of allegations of misconduct by him towards young men during tutorials which had been brushed under the carpet by the establishment. He both agreed with your character analysis and was impressed by your dramatic escape. It will go down in college history, apparently, together with the candidate who set fire to the tutor's newspaper in response to the challenge 'Surprise me.'

'What he was impressed with more, however, was your intellectual ability and the fact that you solved the test equations in less than half the time it took any other candidate.

'He was made aware of your special circumstances during the investigation into your disappearance, but fortunately for you, it doesn't seem to have put him off. The interviews for Caius were scheduled for the following week. He was, therefore, able to offer you a place prior to any other offers being made and seems keen for you to take it up.'

'What did you tell him?' Sherlock asked, turning the letter over and over in his hands, trying to convince himself that it was real.

'I told them you were considering your position.'

Sherlock smiled at this despite himself. Considering his position. Was that what he had been doing all those days and nights on the streets? Not nearly freezing to death, not developing pneumonia, not numbing the pain with as many drugs as he could get his hands on. He had been considering his position, of course, he had.

He ran his finger over the words on the letter 'I am delighted to be able to offer you...'

All he had ever wanted. All he has ever dreamed of. A place at Cambridge, the opportunity to study under some of the most brilliant scientific minds in the country, in the world. And more, an indication that what he was, was okay - no that it was better than okay. That they saw in him something that they wanted, something that mattered, something worthwhile.

He heard the faint sound of carols coming from outside his room. 'What day is it?' he asked Mycroft.

'Christmas Day,' his brother answered. 'Merry Christmas, Sherlock.'

'Merry Christmas, Mycroft,' he replied, suddenly exhausted.

And so he fell asleep to the distant sound of carols, still clutching the letter that secured his future, and for once in his life feeling that maybe, just maybe, Sherlock Holmes was not such a bad person to be.

* * *

 **Authors notes:**

This story comes with huge thanks to O'Donnell for all of her advice and suggestions. This is a far better chapter than it started out as, thanks to your input!

If you would like to know more about Viscount Richard Holmes and his history of 'procurement' have a look at The Box which goes into Sherlock's whole backstory, including his stay at Elmhurst and the events that happened there. The story is continued in the 'Madness and Memory' series.

Gonville and Caius (pronounced 'Keys') is the main college for studying medicine at Cambridge. And who knows, maybe that was where Sherlock developed his fascination for pathology. I bet he snuck into a view anatomy lectures and post-mortems in his time.

The story of the candidate who set fire to the tutor's newspaper at an Oxbridge interview is almost certainly an urban myth that was widely circulating at the time that I was applying many moons ago. As was the story of the candidate who threw a brick through the window without opening it first. As far as I know neither of them got in! The worst think that I was asked at interview was how much you should charge for a human heart in a discussion about selling kidneys but consider that I got off lightly in the circumstances...

And the thick envelope meaning acceptance and thin envelope meaning rejection still stands for exams, school entrances, and many more things. So now you know.

Thank you, as ever, for reading and reviewing. It means a lot.


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